Your Right to Know

Enlarge ImageRequest to buy this photoKyle Robertson | DISPATCHMichelle Duggar speaks about her youngest child, Josie, who is held by her father, Jim Bob, at a Statehouse news conference announcing the reintroduction of the “heartbeat bill.”

A bill that would ban abortions in Ohio once a fetal heartbeat is detected is back, but it faces
an uncertain fate in a legislature that already has handed the anti-abortion movement major
victories this year.

Passed by the House last year but buried by the Senate, the “heartbeat bill” was reintroduced
yesterday by Republican state Reps. Lynn Wachtmann of Napoleon and Christina Hagan of Alliance.

“It’s a new General Assembly, and we’re ready to start the fire again,” Hagan said at a
Statehouse news conference featuring Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar and 17 of their 19 children. The
family appears on the TLC cable program
19 Kids and Counting.

The bill would outlaw abortion once a heartbeat in a fetus is detected, which can be as early as
six weeks into a pregnancy. Many legal scholars have said the law would violate the U.S. Supreme
Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade that abortions are permitted until the fetus is viable outside the
womb, generally around 24 weeks into the pregnancy.

Heartbeat bills enacted in Arkansas and North Dakota have been blocked by federal judges, and
some anti-abortion advocates fear that court rulings on heartbeat laws ultimately could roll back
restrictions on abortions already in place.

The two-year state budget signed into law in June by GOP Gov. John Kasich included new
restrictions to make it more difficult to get an abortion in Ohio and all but impossible in some
areas of the state.

Spokesmen for Kasich and majority Republicans in the Ohio Senate were noncommittal when asked
about the heartbeat bill.

“Our caucus has done quite a bit in this General Assembly to promote the cause of life, and our
members are satisfied with the work we’ve done so far,” said John McClelland, spokesman for the
Senate GOP.

Rob Nichols, Kasich’s spokesman, said, “While the governor is pro-life and believes strongly in
the sanctity of human life, we don’t take a public position on every bill introduced in the General
Assembly.”

Ohio Right to Life President Mike Gonidakis declined to state a position on the heartbeat bill,
but he praised recent victories: “Over the past few months, we have passed five pro-life laws and
closed three abortion clinics in the state of Ohio.”

Gonidakis said the focus of his organization will be on legislation to make adopting children
easier and less expensive.

“There’s no other initiative we see right now that we will be engaged in other than adoption
reform,” he said.

“Here we go again. Just one month ago, Gov. Kasich enacted one of the worst anti-choice laws in
the country,” Copeland said. “That legislation is forcing the closure of abortion-care facilities,
defunds family-planning providers and tells doctors how they have to practice medicine.”